Musings on Alien Experience

Posted on 15 Jul 2012 @ 2:20pm by Ensign Rhett Brubwick

552 words; about a 3 minute read

Mission: Episode 01 - Project Sienna
Location: USS Galileo: Deck 4, Chief Diplomat's Office
Timeline: MD08 - 1210 hours

ON

Ethnocentrism. Xenocentrism. Most humans who thought of the concept at all, still thought of it in terms of human race or culture. Which, oddly enough, was exactly what Xenoncentrism was all about. Rhett had written a paper on it during college. Full marks. The problem with the concept was really quite simple, and extraordinarily complex.

Humans all think in generally the same way. They feel the same emotions and have an excellent innate understanding of expressions and norms. Sure, there are cultural differences that have been perpetuated over centuries, but a smile means the same thing in any given culture--though perhaps the connotation has changed.

Between species, however, there are no certainties. The discovery of a single parent species that seeded thousands of planets with bio-engineered cells certainly explained the ability for species to interbreed--at least somewhat. It also explained to some extent, the seemingly similar expressions between species. But really, Humans simply assumed that when a Betazoid or a Romulan smiles that they feel what a Human feels.

It wasn't at all proven. In fact, the likelihood was so minor, that Rhett didn't think it possible. Although his understanding of biology and psychology were rudimentary at best, it seemed impossible for any two alien species to feel exactly the same things and express it in exactly the same ways.

Humans dominated Federation culture. Federation Standard was simply a variant of an old-Earth language known as English. Starships ran on a Human-centric 24 hour schedule, invariably synchronized with Earth. According to Federation charts, every sector in the Galaxy was ordered with Sol as sector 001.

Through it all, Humans just assumed that their universal translators spit out exact translations, right down to nuance. Not even human language translators could do that, not without a person there who understood both languages at an instinctual level. Simple word-to-word translations left out a huge part of the picture. It was why Rhett's unmet ambition to learn at least ten languages rankled so much. He was just like everyone else. He assumed that what he got out of the translator meant exactly what his experience and biology predisposed him to believe.

It must be difficult to be an alien aboard a Starfleet vessel. Rhett mused. He brought up a new panel on his computer screen. "Computer, search for articles with xenocentrism, ethnocentrism, articles with either word, or articles that feature interviews with alien species on these topics or closely related topics." The computer beeped. The screen showed a growing list of articles, links, holographic recreations, and more. Below the list a counter read, "1564 articles found. 2 hours 56 minutes remaining."

Rhett leaned back and closed his eyes. Three hours. I guess that should be enough time to think of some data filters. For the next three hours he thought of ways to filter out irrelevant or outdated information. By the time the search had completed, the diplomat had already entered over 100 different filters to organize the millions of articles the search had provided.

By the end, only two hundred and eight relevant articles remained. Rhett was pleased to see that only twenty two of them were by human authors. Perhaps reading articles by alien authors would help him understand how to approach the subject.

He sat down for a couple of days' hard reading.

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